Should we sing Psalms in our public gatherings?

This is a question that we as pastors of Auburndale Baptist Church have been wrestling with for some time. Our answer to the question and how to proceed has been written about in detail by one of our pastors, Jason Adkins, who has done a large majority of the heavy lifting on this issue for us. He has done an outstanding job of not just answering this question posed, but has presented some very helpful practical tips on how to incorporate Psalms in the congregational singing life of your church as well as why you should. It is also written from the context of a traditional and historical SBC church that had never sang Psalms before. Jason gives some great counsel on how to approach this topic with a pastoral sensitivity.

Below you will find this information summarized in a series of his blog posts. I heartily commend them to you and encourage you to wrestle with this issue within your own church. For those who have been singing Psalms in your services long before we even began to think about it (I know you are out there and read this blog), there are some helpful online resources you may not know about that Jason has packaged well that may aid in your continual pursuit to be faithful in this task.

I hope you find this helpful…

The Psalms: Truly Persistent Songs is a series of posts by Jason Adkins, an assistant pastor of Auburndale Baptist Church and author of the blog, The Persistence of Song. Jason argues for the recovery of Psalm-singing in congregational worship. The three part series also features resources and practical insights on incorporating musical Psalms into the worship of the church.

4 comments on “Should we sing Psalms in our public gatherings?”

I’m looking forward to reading Jason’s posts, although we started psalm singing this summer as I began a preaching series “Summer in the Psalms.” During a period of time between ministries, I attended a small Presbyterian Reformed church in Iowa (a dear friend whom I had grown up with was the ruling elder there). They were exclusive non-instrumental psalm singers. I didn’t agree with their biblical argument for exclusivity, but I had to admit, these saints loved their God and His psalms and could they ever sing them to His praise. The children, some as young as 5 & 6 years old had many psalms committed to memory simply because they sang them every Sunday. When I determined to preach from the Psalms this summer, I knew we had to sing the particular psalms I was preaching from. The congregation at Cornerstone has truly enjoyed this exercise, finding them singable (we’ve substituted some more familiar hymn tunes for a few of the old Scottish, nearly unsingable ones), helpful through the course of a week and enlightening to a whole psalm (you can’t skip over “they shall be a portion for jackals” when you preach it or sing it!).

Please keep us posted on how this goes for you. We are exclusive psalmody and like the children KS came across, we grew up memorising psalm after psalm. It’s great now 🙂
We’re in Scotland, so singing the ‘unsingable’ Scottish tunes began at such a young age, they are second nature 🙂